The Rajapaksha Manor

Senior Government Administration officer, Kamalsiri, making a family visit to Radawana, takes a detour to its neighbouring village of Kannimahara, on a whim, to catch up with his old friend Mahendra, the scion to the Rajapaksha dynasty and current owner of their ancestral walauwa.

Within a day and a distance of a couple miles, the story covers thirty years of a family story, political/social changes of the whole country and the transformation of a “low-caste” village boy to the zenith of government service, using numerous flashbacks interspersed between current episodes. The inferiority complex that drives his whole life show its different facets throughout the story, unrecognised even by the narrator, Kamalasiri. This book is an English translation of K. Jayatilake’s Sinhala novel, “Rajapaksha Walauwa”.